The Failed Zip Drive Competitor - SyQuest SparQ Unboxing & Exploration

[@tyta1]

"Mom trusts SparQ to keep her recipes top secret" - Indeed, once the cartridge fails nobody will be able to read them again ever 😉

[@HuntergamerbenOfficial]

Yea cant expose your recipes if they dont exist to begin with

[@kFY514]

To be fair, 50 units of 1GB cartridges could actually feel like lifetime supply back in 1997 😅

[@punboleh7081]

That limit surely would have lasted for the life time of the company.

[@skeleton_craftGaming]

now you can't even get hard drives that small...

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

640k ought to be enough for anybody

[@gyrgrls]

@@LonelySpaceDetective "Please don't call me, I won't call you Don't tell me to fix it for you I'm not Bill Gates; I'm tech support"

[@attack0nmem0ry]

I hadn't noticed previously, but I'm glad you followed through on that "wall of 3.5in disks" idea! 🍻 Looks epic.

[@bbowman105]

Unknown fact: The picture on the box is a couple calling tech support wondering why the drive is dead.

[@siliconinsect]

I have the original Syquest from 1983. Imagine a 5mb metal HDD platter in a cartridge with proto-SCSI interface for Apple II. It even spins up and seeks like an old stepper hard drive. Great vid as usual!

[@redleader6442]

You talking about the drives that used 'Q-Paks?'

[@jeremiahufer7948]

Fun fact from a german dude: "Sexy" is actually a song by german artist Marius Müller Westernhagen, released in 1989!

[@nicholasneyhart396]

The song is actually pretty good, better than I that would be.

[@panqueque445]

"Today we're gonna be talking about... storage" YEAAAHHHH LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO

[@lexluthermiester]

I still have my Zip, Jaz, EZDrive and Sparq, with disks, and all work perfectly. I've only ever had one drive die and that was a parallel port Zip drive which got dropped and broke internal parts. IOMega was awesome enough to replace it, even though it was accidental damage. They replaced it with a SCSI version, which I was ok with! I had heard horror stories over the years, but never seen one personally.

[@SylvesterAshcroft88]

This is the first time I've heard about this format, it seems kinda neat!

[@thedavyjones]

Michael, your voice is so soothing and a pleasure to listen to. I hope you can more tech documentary videos in the future. I love those!

I like how you had to remove the insert before being able to read the instructions on how to remove it

[@InfiniteForces]

Michael,I saw a video about SyQuest on a channel called This Does Not Compute. In that video,Collin(the channel owner/presenter),talks about an even more failed drive competitor to both Iomega's Zip/Jaz and SyQuest's SparQ/SyJet drives,called the Orb Drive,from Castlewood Systems(a company that was founded by the same founder of SyQuest,along 10 other ex-employees from that company). It would be really nice if you could find a working one along with some blank media to showcase for us in one of your videos.

[@diesieben07]

The mysterious MIDI file is actually a real song by the same name of German artist Marius Müller-Westernhagen.

[@tstahlfsu]

Oh man, I know people had problems but I LOVED my Sparq drive! Never had a single problem with it.

[@RacerX-]

Oh man SparQ and the earlier 1.5 GB SyJet were terrible products. These drives didn't cause their downfall though, as they had already been in trouble in 1995/1996. CD-R was the death stroke for them. For many years SyQuest owed the removable market for desktop publishing. Most DP houses used SyQuest. They were very reliable then. The direct competitor to the ZIP from SyQuest was the EZ135. It was faster and super cool at the time but also the last quality drive they made. But when DP moved on to other methods of transfer like CD-R and even internet transfer, it was the end for SyQuest.

[@AWriterWandering]

Then CD-Rs got cheap enough for regular consumers to buy in bulk, killing off Zip too.

[@JustPyroYT]

13:50 I know I already said that in another comment but this floppy wall looks INCREDIBLE! I really like it :D

[@X150t]

Always loved the spinup sound of zip drives

[@LikeNOW100]

Yes

[@gyrgrls]

That's where I used to store old zip archives. My Ella Fitzgerald music collection was kept on Jaz disks...

[@DankRedditMemes]

Pretty sure what killed the ZIP Drive more was that it was a proprietary format, unlike the floppy and the CD, so OEMs never included them in computers.

[@stephanieiwaniuk6088]

Hello everyone!

[@18rocksthegames78]

Hello

[@supahmario64fan]

Hi!

[@Aghag_aviation]

Hello every one it’s markerpliyer hear

[@_lun4r_]

And welcome back to another video

[@averythecatto]

What's up fellow polyhedrons?

[@bladesofseven]

Watching Colin from This Does Not Comp's video on the subject introduced me to this, so another video on Syquest is nice to see.

[@seangraham-qf8tp]

An MJD video never exciting thats not possible all MJD videos are entertaining. I mean this man offers so much in his videos love your videos

[@TexTom1981]

Syquest WAS the primary medium to send your publishing files to printers on at one time.

[@maureen-hm4in]

you did a great job creating the video! it made me want to learn more about these stuff , keep it up

[@maxamuscrasious3047]

I kinda miss the days when even the most basic program had to MULTIMEDIA for the sake of MULTIMEDIAING in your face.

[@LordFalon]

I don't know what you are talking about, these things were great! I still have both my internal & external drives and about 20+ disks some still new in shrink wrap. :)

[@LordFalon]

Also, they had 2 versions of the external, SCSI and Parallel port.

[@egbront1506]

I had the parallel port and ATAPI versions. These were great at the time but didn't last long. The ATAPI lasted maybe a month and the external drive started giving read errors after a few months. You clearly had to handle these with kid gloves. I did look at the Castlewood Orb drives as a replacement as those were twice the capacity and I hoped for better reliability but glad I cut my losses at the end.

[@erikmerchant567]

I still have an Orb drive and it still works great. Never had any issues with it. That said, I have two of these Sparq's and I've never took them out of the box due to all their failures. They were awful in that the failure wrecked the drive itself, damaged the disks in a manner that then ensured if it was inserted into another drive not already broken, it would damage it and break it spreading like a virus. Just terrible.

[@catto24]

that floppy disk wallpaper is just perfect

[@savagesarethebest7251]

I am terribly fascinated by the fact that this old 98 machine is a good bit more snappier than a completely new computer...

[@stampederealty]

I remember back when 1 gb was considered a lot 😅 just a reminder that someday 1TB will be considered pedestrian

[@badstate]

Zip drives had the exact same problem, where a damaged disk will break the drive, and then the drive will damage a new disc in the same way. I watched an office of five or six Zip drives go belly up in a single day because of this problem. Zip was a horrible, flawed design. LS120 was a much better design, based on the tried and true floppy format, and could even read and write regular floppies. And each LS120 disc held 20 more MB than a zip drive. Sadly it never really took off.

[@billyhatcher643]

im glad u didnt do the setup first cause that was hilarious to see why all of that cool free stuff was on the drive to begin with

[@DavidWonn]

I'm glad I somehow managed to skip the zip drive era, keeping most important things in floppy sized chunks until I used a single CD-RW as the floppy replacement around the millennium. Being on dial-up probably helped in this transition era, ironically.

[@IsoMacintosh]

7:37 Love how they tell you to open the door and pull the tab after you already did it.

[@kuroinekonya]

who else been binging the old vids waiting for a new post?

[@RetroGamerOG_]

Zip drives are cool! I use them all the time and I used a file zipper on my computer but I never heard of this

[@barra352]

I love how this video is barely about SparQ.

[@boydpukalo8980]

I am working on converting an external parallel port Sparq drive into SCSI by taking the EZFlyer 230 SCSI bridgeboard from a donor external drive and replacing the Sparq's parallel port to IDE bridgeboard! I have the 2x external SCSI EZ135, 2 x external SCSI EZFlyer, Sparq, and 2x external SyJet and 1 x internal SyJet drives, as well as internal 55 & 88 MB SCSI drives in my collection, all NOS within the last 2 years. Back in the 1990's I owned the revolutionary Iomega Zip and Jaz drives, but dont remember Syquest. Floppy to zip was liberating back then before USB thumbdrives existed. Really cool video.

[@QuertyQw33n]

oh my goodness. I remember these. I used to use zip discs in middle and high school during the mid 2000s on my Braille Computer. (yes. There is such a thing.) I used to do my homework on it and transfer files to and from it and a standard desktop.

[@VSigma725]

I have an external parallel SparQ drive and I was extremely surprised when it actually worked, given I got it at a flea market of all places.

[@brianoconnell6459]

I recall one called the "Superdrive", which was a 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy drive, AND a MO (magnetooptical) drive capable of storing 120 MB as well, using disks of the same form factor. It was... Okay? At the time it came on the market, however, Iomega came out with the Jazz drive, which could store 640 MB (if memory serves), on one disk.

[@DeepfriedChips]

Waking up and immediately watching a 40 minute video about a failed zip drive competitor

[@Valery0p5]

The problem is not that they were pointing on removable magnetic storage, the problem was that they were pointing at non standard magnetic removable discs, without the read and write unit. We often forget it but the first Ipod had an hard drive in there, not flash memory. Once FireWire and then USB became popular, external drives did.

[@JaredConnell]

Who forgot the iPod had a hard drive? That was its main feature and all full sized iPods had them.

[@GikeroMage]

I bought a new one in 2005. For $20ish. It came with 2 extra disks. I installed the drive in my brother's Micron desktop and we put Stacraft on one of the disks. Pretty sure we stopped using that PC before this SparQ drive had a chance to fail.

[@retroshitposts9807]

22:19 I love spotting the default Borland ObjectWindows checkmark in the wild.

[@vasacca]

Very entertaining as usual!

[@kale.online]

Syquest may be outdated but someone is renewing those SSL certs

[@boumerguy7042]

I had an external variant of this device that used parallel port. It was really interesting for computers that did not had USB ports and sometimes no CD-ROM either.

[@markshade8398]

It exited before USB.... That's the reason for using the parallel port.

[@gbresaleking]

As a teenager mom bought us a new pc and it had a zip drive built into it, she also bought me a home minidisc player that came with the portable minidisc player too , haha great times

[@nonsuch]

I still use my ZIP, JAZZ, and Syquest drives for my musical instrument samplers. Of course I use new solutions like the Gotek Floppy Emulators, SCSI2SD, etc as well but, I still love the old parallel SCSI format for nostalgic reasons.

[@hkkelvinlee]

I bought an external SparQ for use with my notebook (TI branded and Acer-made with whopping 75Mhz Pentium chip). The notebook has only 1.2G HD, which was big for notebook at the time but never adequate. Adding a SparQ (via Parallel port I think) with multi-1G cartridges was like a God send. I actually bought more cartridges when SyQuest went under. Pity the drive itself failed like 1 year later with many spare cartridges left unused. With hindsight, SparQ is technically problematic. The cartridge is an actual hard drive with spinning disc. Putting it into cartridge means it is semi-opened design, allowing dust to get in inevitably. Real HD is sealed for a reason. Accumulated dust eventually will kill your drive and/or cartridge. Matter of time really.

[@aytowastaken]

That Floppy Disk wall looks awesome!

[@dexgaming6394]

9:02 I like to see "fully functional" in quotes.

[@martinitime1975]

I was in line at the post office to send mine for repair when I got the news that Syquest had gone under

[@danieljm1234]

I just noticed the floppy drive backdrop

[@briannacluck5494]

Zip drive was my media format of choice all the way up to 2006. It perfectly served its needed purpose for me, which was a place to keep all my roms as backups in case my computer got a virus. I would have lost my mind at the thought of a 1 GB sparq cartridge!

[@vwestlife]

SparQ was a competitor to the 1 GB Iomega Jaz drive (later increased to 2 GB). SyQuest's direct competitor to the Zip drive was the EZ135, which held 135 MB as its name suggests. Later it was renamed EZFlyer and the capacity was increased to 230 MB.

[@cleverlyblonde]

Oh yeah I remember all the software that would talk to you in the 90s. Speech was so novel they put it into _everything_ back then.

[@ltxr9973]

Extremely nostalgic, my family had an even older cartridge drive when I was a kid. I think these were removable harddrives with something between 100-300MB which was a lot back then. Like these 2:46. I was always told how important it was to unmount them before swapping cartridges and nowadays I know how the worked so that makes perfect sense. If you look at modern HDDs the whole idea of removable hard drives seems alien 😁.

[@blainepalmerza]

Awesome video, Michael!

[@richardestes6499]

It's funny you mention the partial acquisition by EMC. They were acquired by Dell about eight years ago.

[@branhicks]

That space banana video was on our Gateway 2000 restore cd for our 486/66. I haven't seen that in 30 years

[@Aeduo]

That background loading in on that memail thing wa slike the computer running cinebench, but it's the 90s. I love that everything makes noises and has its own silly UI style. It's so from its time. Very charming, but a lot of the software seems kinda cheap and crummy, although that drawing program actually looks competent. This had some real vargskelethor shareware madness vibes.

[@gwenlop9512]

There was also a SyQuest “Quest” drive that could roughly the same data as a DVD, but the cartridge only exists as a .GIF on PCMag’s computer glossary.

[@MillwalltheCat]

Used the 44MB and 88MB SyQuest many years ago, along with a Mac IIcx and an A4 B&W monitor.

[@beepyshenanigans]

cool, i’ve always liked retro storage, and love your vids❤❤❤

[@shibolinemress8913]

That island scene looks like Johnny Castaway! 😊

[@thedungeondelver]

That drum sting from the HEAT launcher is sampled from "Scarecrow" by Ministry off their _Psalm 69_ release (1992 I believe?)

[@EBTheOriginalMaster]

The bit where you told the voiceover person on the Howdy program to shut up, 😂

[@tookeydookey]

Michael: Storage is not the most exciting topic. Me: GASP! You take that back!😆😆

[@KazyEXE]

Wait, was this the click of death spreader? I could have sworn the ZipDisk had the "drive breaks disc so bad it breaks other drives" thing.

[@EnigmaticLucas]

The Zip disk click of death had two forms. The more common form only ruins the data structure and couldn’t spread to other drives. The less common form physically damaged the mylar and could spread to other drives.

[@Fortuna1]

Can be a great storage system, but for other storage systems, can be a great into the next generation (XP-7)

[@truefatesshtposts3628]

Watching this during school

[@BMXrecords]

why not run crystal disk mark? im sure some of us are curious about the actual performance of these obscure storage things

[@markshade8398]

Just a bit of different opinion to share. I think SyQuest existed first with their physical but removable hard disks. And they weren't originally competing with Zip Drive. Also, they weren't a failure, they just weren't the overall winer. And the SparQ was a very late entry to the game.

[@cyberjack]

McAfee and Norton both famous for making any PC run like crap lol

[@bojinglebells]

Zip was definitely meant to be a floppy alternative, this (and Iomega's own Jaz drive) was meant to be something else; basically an external HDD system that was cartridge based (far more capacity, also much better performance). Zip and floppy's purpose was replaced by USB flash drives and SD cards, SparQ's (and Jaz's) purpose was replaced by external hard drives (particularly USB3.0 and later, Thunderbolt based solutions, and the now defunct eSATA/Firewire), and of course cheap, burnable CD media would hurt both in the meantime

[@jodajackson4489]

Yeah, I had a Sparq drive, the internal EIDE version, and it failed. Syquest was still in operation then and sorted the issue but the refurbished unit eventually failed too. No wonder they went out of business.

[@MikinessAnalog]

As for the opinions of those experiencing use of these, it boils down to expectations & what it was used for (& how often). Same mentality applies to plasma TVs & laser TVs.

[@SuperPigCop]

Would love to see a video for HEAT

[@JarrodCoombes]

That drive is a direct competitor the Jaz drive, not the Zip drive. The Jaz was also 1Gb and hard plattered like that one. Later Iomega also made a 2Gb Jaz drive.

[@johnps1670]

Always hoped mini disc was the next universal storage standard. Bought a zip drive, was great. Never had problems with it. Think they solved the design flaws at that time.

[@near5148]

Your videos are so good

[@MichaelMJD]

Glad you like them!

[@ReverseCity777]

I miss my zip drive. I wish I could find some of my old disks. I had an internal one too

[@lanecolvin95]

I hope I don't miss your firework display

[@robsquared2]

"Who do you trust with your life?" ...is that a threat?

[@engchoontan8483]

SyQuest made the EZ-drive = hard not floppy = and lost to hard-disks = did not lose to floppy(zip) = did-not lose to MD(optical-magneto) If need a rehash of glass-platter(IBM-Hitachi) in MiniDisc for rheumatoid-artritist sufferers or (dual)CF-card nand-flash for DSLR storage mirror (yikes raid 01,10)... Optical for MD is just ... Floppy in 3.5" format worked very well... Write-once in days of BIOS hacks is ... SSD, MLC, ... NVMe, ... TV-box sandwich... electronics... planned-obsolesence industry...

[@Kaleb99j]

I NEED that mario star wallpaper.

[@ashethank]

Almost had a LTT level sponsor segway there.

[@danieljm1234]

Segue**. A Segway is one of those 2 wheel thingos that your mom thinks is cool

[@Kitsudote]

1 GB is pretty wild for back in the day. I remember my first USB stick being 70 MB 😂 Also, I'm so glad talking software hasn't become the norm 🤫

[@DJGeeks]

Do you guys remember the jaz disk. I used the zip and jaz disk. It was primarily used for video editing. Back in the day

[@AlexanderKurtz]

the sexy,midi was a .midi from the German song Sexy by Marius Müller-Wersternhagen.

[@SoraHjort]

Hope you cover other media. Like MO Drives, which were a quite odd mix of magnetic and optical tech.

[@voltare2amstereo]

"a failed zip drive competitor" I had high hopes of super disk succeeding. (Ls120) The quicker FDD read speeds and that powered reject..

[@troyBORG]

I know my school had a Zip Drive for our School Yearbook to store all the pictures when they sent it off to be printed.

[@wilsmith7173]

I bought one of these brand new back in day, and then imported a 3 pack of disks. Thankfully I returned the drive under warranty (money-back) and ebayed the disks for more than I paid for. Bullet dodged!

[@mattm7220]

Norton *and* Mcafee on the same OS... I think you've just admitted to being completely sadistic (or masochistic, depending on whether the computer or yourself is the one suffering) 🤣

[@PinkAgaricus]

Could that (Limit 50) be in reference to the amount of people who can win a lifetime supply of cartridges in a month (if they did a winner(s) per day)? I know that (50) doesn't make sense because a month has 30-31 (or 28-29 for February, depending on if it's a leap year or not). Okay either way that 50 doesn't make sense. I've seen those unclarified limits at a certain supermarket on one particular sale. Yea it's the Friday Sale at Safeway when they have the "6 pk of 24 oz Pepsi on sale for 2/$5 (Limit 2)". They really need to clarify it on the sale sign without the shopper going to the checkout person to ask is it 2 items per family/person or 2 instances of the sale price.

[@TatsuZZmage]

Lol norton and mcafee you like live with half your cpu in use, also damn that was a smooth segway. better then linus ^_~

[@NavJack27gaming]

imagine having a lifetime supply of carts (limit 50) in 1997. 50gigs. wow

[@miked4377]

i have the same initals as you..m.j.d. and my name is mike and i love retro computers!good channel